Wednesday, June 27, 2012

This week's TAST is the Palestrina stitch. When I looked at Sharon's instructions for this stitch, the first thing I thought was, I can't do this, it's for lefties! Then I started clicking on her links for variations and found what she calls the Reversed Palestrina, which is the same but going from right to left. So that's what I used, sort of. While I made each individual stitch from the right, I did them left to right like in the fantastic video tutorial by Mary Corbet.

The only one of my books that I found it in was Judith Baker Montano's Elegant Stitches. She has a very good diagram there.

Monday, June 25, 2012

On Friday my husband came home with a load of fresh cherries that someone gave him. There were three different kinds. So, my son, the expert baker, decided to make a pie. The rest of the cherries he pitted and froze. He froze them laid out on a tray and then put them in bags. When you eat one, it's just like eating ice cream!

Anyway, while he was cooking the filling, I came over to peek in the pot and was fascinated by the wonderful color! Here's with a flash and without.

While it was baking, it was boiling over.

After taking it out I figured out why. The center of the crust rose and pushed out some of the filling. Here's a top view and a bottom view.

We were both stumped as to what happened. If any of my readers knows why that would happen to a pie, we'd love to know!

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

This week's TAST is the Cable Chain stitch. This is a new-to-me stitch. I had a lot of trouble with it. I tried following Sharon's instructions. I googled to find others and tried following Sarah's instructions. I found that Mary Corbet, of Needle 'n Thread, has a video tutorial. Of course, all of their instructions were very good, I just kept doing the wrong thing!

I must have started and ripped out (cut the threads, actually) about five or six times before I FINALLY figured out what I was doing wrong! I should have taken photos, but didn't think of it at the time. So, here are my simple results.

I also found this diagram of an interesting variation, but I wasn't going to push my luck. I didn't have a chance to look through my books, as I usually do before I even start. OK, I forgot.

Monday, June 18, 2012

The winner of Cheryl Lynch's Sew Embellished is Diane, who commented:"I have been following Cheryl's Wednesday Wanderings and impressed with her
embellishments, I would love to win this book. I am working on a gift for my
niece who is getting married and know that the techniques in Cheryl's book would
be extremely helpful."

Congratulations, Diane! I will be sending you an email shortly. Please reply to it with your mailing address.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Cheryl sent each of us on the blog tour one signed book to review and keep and one signed book to give away to one of you! See giveaway details at the end of this post.

Just look at this full table of contents! Cheryl shares a lot of information and there are EIGHT projects in the book with full instructions and photos. I was lucky to get to meet Cheryl in February when she was visiting in Jerusalem. We had a little show and tell with each other and I had a lot of fun fondling some of her beautiful little pieces of work!

Cheryl likes to do a lot of embellishing with buttons and beads. She has a section in the book about them which includes her description of how to put them on by machine. I have been sewing buttons on by machine for years and still had something to learn from Cheryl!

Cheryl's work is so creative! She likes to put words on her quilts. In the project shown below she has words sewn on using beads with letters on them. What fun!

You must check out Cheryl's blog, Cheryl Lynch Quilts, and see her weekly Wednesday Wanderings, where she makes memory pieces about places that she's been to. Cheryl really does a lot of traveling!

You can buy a signed copy of Sew Embellished from Cheryl's Etsy shop. On her website, Cheryl shows even more of her wonderful work from over the years and has information on buying her patterns and books.

If you would like a chance to win a signed copy of Sew Embellished, just leave a comment on this post (only this post). You have until midnight, Sunday night, June 17, to leave your comment. I will use the Random.org guy to choose a winner and announce it on Monday.

Only entries that have an email address come up when I hit reply to the comment that comes to my email, OR have an email address within the text of the comment, will be eligible to win. If you are not sure if you are a no-reply blogger or not, go to SewCalGal's page where she explains the whole issue and how to fix it if you wish. As SewCalGal implies, if you have never gotten a reply to comments you left on someone's blog, chances are that you are a no-reply blogger. If you don't use a google blogger account, you can always leave your email address in the body of the comment.

If you don't win this time, you can enter the giveaways at the stops on the tour that follow through mid-July:

A little about Debbie

I am a quilter, quiltmaker, quiltartist, embroiderer, crocheter, knitter, sewist, etc., etc. This blog is mainly to share photos of things that I am working on or have finished. You may email me at debbiesther at gmail dot com.